


Hands That Healed Mine

by natrgrs (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Canon, F/M, Kinda not, Protective Natasha Romanov, Self-Harm, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers-centric, kinda canon-compliant, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 14:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21321823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/natrgrs
Summary: Steve Rogers and his coping mechanism, and how Natasha Romanoff helped him.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 11
Kudos: 78





	Hands That Healed Mine

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Depictions of self-harm in this. 
> 
> If you're uncomfortable with it, or it triggers you, please don't proceed on reading it. Thank you, and enjoy!

_ The man out of time.  _

Loki’s voice rings in his head, and with it follows a series of scenarios he was all too familiar with. He remembers sinking into the arctic, the cold slowly developing around him. He remembers slowly losing consciousness, and feeling the ice start to form around him. He remembers how his life flashed before his eyes, before the darkness swallowed him completely. 

_ Sarah Rogers and how she slowly succumbed to death. Moving in with the Barnes’. Faking his military documents. Meeting Dr. Erskine. The process of receiving the serum. The war. HYDRA. Bucky’s fall.  _

It all rings inside his head, and with each passing scenario he continues to shake, until he hears Peggy’s voice. 

_ “Steve?”  _

He jolts up, sweat trickling down his whole body. Once he takes in his surroundings, he flops back to bed, taking a glance at the clock on his bedside. 

2:38 A.M

His nightmares seem to never fade. With each day that passes, it only gets more vivid, more horrifying, and louder. He recalls the nightmare he had the other night, he couldn’t hear Peggy’s voice then, just what he imagined she looked like before she lost contact with him. Her brown eyes, glistening with tears as she begs him to turn the plane around. 

Now he hears her voice, pleading his name.  _ What? Am I gonna hear Bucky’s scream too, the next time?  _ He thinks to himself as he lies in his bed. 

For a moment he wills himself to just go back to sleep, and get more rest. Later in the morning, was another day at SHIELD, another day to  _ move on.  _ But, like any other night plagued with his nightmares, he gets off his mattress, changes into an outfit more appropriate for the gym, and fixes the stuff he needs to bring to work. 

_ Might as well be there this early.  _

As he arrives at the Triskellion, he notices he wasn’t the first one there.  _ Of course, the crisis around the world never stops, it never rests. _ He thinks, as he nods to countless agents who have nodded at his way in respect and in greeting. As soon as he placed his things in his designated office, and have changed into a proper workout gear, he proceeds to the gym. 

It’s a lot different from the one he used to go to, before the Chitauri. It’s way more modern, way more  _ out of his time _ , and way more unfamiliar. But, just like that old gym he used to go to, it was empty.  _ Who would even be working out at 3:00 AM, anyway? _ He thinks as he chuckles a bit to himself, and proceeding to steady a bag before hitting it. 

_ Out of time. _

He tries to tune it out, but it only gets louder with each hit he lands on the bag. 

_ 8 o’clock. Don’t you dare be late. _

He clenches his jaw hard, when he hears her voice again. He tries his  _ damn  _ best as he throws in more hits and punches, at tuning out the voices he hears in his head. He breaks the bag, sand spilling out of it. He huffs, looking at the bag. 

He sighs, and notices the replacements reserved not far from it, and he continues replacing, as he continues to wreck another bag after the other. It seems as if feeling pain is the only reason he lives. But no matter how hard he hits, how much blood he loses and how many times he jumps onto danger for the sake of a purpose, nothing will compensate for his heavy grief of lost time. 

“You know, you’re in violation of the no trashing SHIELD equipment rule here, Rogers.” He hears a familiar voice state at the far end of the gym. 

It was only then that he notices Natasha Romanoff in all her glory — black stealth suit, guns placed on her thighs, and her hair a bit messed — standing at the entrance of the gym. He acknowledges her presence, lifting hi  _ unwrapped and ungloved  _ hand up to give her a little wave. 

“Long mission?” He asks her as he places another bag in replacement of the one he just wrecked. He notices her slipping out of her boots, and unclasping her gauntlets. 

“Classified information, soldier.” She replies walking towards him, a disarming smirk on her face. “I see you like hitting bags.” 

“Old habit.” He says flatly, holding the bag in place, and in a final tone so that the spy wouldn’t question any further. 

Like the perceptive spy, that she is, Natasha quickly gets it, letting out an, “Ah, I see.” as she turns around, she unzips the top part of her stealth suit, revealing a black tank top underneath it. “So you do it, without gloves, huh?” She asks, and he remains quiet. 

“Spar with me.” She says, turning back to him.

“Romanoff, you just finished a mission.” Steve argues, and Nat just raises an eyebrow at him as if she was challenging him. 

“I have a lot of energy left in me, so help me drain it out so I could sleep tonight.” Steve doesn’t question anymore, as she leads him towards the ring in the middle of the gym. 

The moment he steps in, Natasha grabs his left hand in hers, and before he could argue, she starts wiping the blood with a cotton and alcohol from the wounds he sustained. “Natasha-”

“I’m not getting hit by bloodied hands. My face is too pretty.” She says teasingly, and he lets out a soft chuckle. Hearing it, she gives him a small smile, and when she finishes cleaning both of his knuckles, she wraps it up neatly. 

“Give me your best shot, Rogers.” 

…

It’s been nearly 4 months, and all the trails they’ve followed turned out to be empty. And in times like these, all his nightmares were getting worse. 

After the ice, after the Chitauri it was all about the time he has lost. 

And now, after finding out that his best friend is alive, it’s all about Bucky’s fall, and how he failed to save him. It’s filled with scenarios of how he imagined HYDRA tortured the most important person in his life. He imagines, Bucky sitting in the chair authorities have recovered from one of the locations specified in the files released, getting shocked in the head multiple times as they so desperately try to wipe him. 

He dreams about how Bucky would’ve definitely screamed as his memories were slowly erased from his mind. He dreams of how he imagined Zola changed and manipulated him, and how he completely cut Bucky’s arm, replacing it with a weapon designed to kill anyone. 

_ Who the hell is Bucky? _

He jolts up awake, as he remembers the look of confusion on his best friend’s face when he called his name on that highway. 

He leaves out of his hotel room, asking the receptionist if the gym at the hotel they were staying at was open. To his relief, the woman told him it was open 24 hours since they were being considerate of guests who were experiencing jet lag, and wanted to hit the gym to get rid of it. 

As he arrived at the gym, he reminds himself to hit  _ less  _ harder and he finds himself not alone, but he notices the man, and the other lady were too occupied in running on the treadmill, headphones on their ears, and he could practically hear the song playing with the volume on it. 

He pulls his punches, but he still notices the bag starting to rip. He looks at his knuckles, and he finds them less wounded than what it usually looked like. He steps on to the other side of the bag, still pulling his punches, and another rip starts, but this time it doesn’t stop him, and so does the wounds starting to form on his knuckles again. 

“Nat?” He asks, surprised when he sees her stepping into the gym, a tight smile on her face. 

“Hey, soldier.” She states, walking towards him, prying his hands away from the bag. “Might want to go back to your room before they find these rips on the bag.” She smirks. 

As they settle back into his room, he takes another look at her. 

Her hair has grown longer, reaching down below her shoulders, and there was a not so pretty cut on her eyebrow. He supposes she had been on her own personal mission, and have encountered some enemies along the way. 

She had a lot of those. He thinks as he remembers the files she released on the internet, free for everyone to see the naked truth about her. And with those found in one click, he knows they found her more easily now. 

“I told you, you should be wrapping your hands if you want to punch some bags.” Natasha states as she sits on the edge of his bed, pulling under the first aid kit. 

As she takes his hands from him, Steve stared at the cut on her eyebrow. It wasn’t only that, she also had a busted lip. 

“How’d you find me?” He asks her, as she applies alcohol on his knuckles, and he winces a bit. 

“You’ve got to learn to wrap your hands, Steve.” 

“Nat.”

“Are you really asking me that question?” She smirks, and he huffs out a low chuckle. “I was dealing with something around the area, and I saw a little bird earlier in the café, figured you were here too.” 

Sam went to get coffee earlier, he concludes she saw him, but he didn’t see her. Otherwise, Sam would’ve babbled to him non-stop about seeing her. He keeps on insisting they had something. She finishes cleaning his wounds, and he smiles at her thankful, for cleaning it up. 

“Nothing the serum can’t handle.” He mumbles, as Natasha places the first aid kit back under the bed. He sees the way she shakes her head, and when she looks back up at him, she has this look in her eyes that made him want to tell her everything, and then it would all be alright. 

“Stop hurting yourself, okay?” He nods, but he knows it wouldn’t be that easy. He knows, that she knows this too. 

They had the same coping mechanisms, both of which included a certain variation of self-harm. His was punching bags without gloves or unwrapped. Hers was dancing until her toes bled out. He learned this during one of the nights he was in SHIELD, and he heard music not far off, and once he stepped into where she was, he sees her pointe shoes stained red, as she continuously danced, not stopping even as she heard him. 

“Are you staying?”

“I still have to find more covers. And you still need to find your best friend.” Natasha answers, another tight smile on her lips. “I’ll be back soon.” She adds, lifting his hands up, pressing a soft kiss to his knuckles which make both of them laugh a bit. “There, all better now.”

They both release a low chuckle, and he could see the sparkle in her eyes that he never saw before. He couldn’t say it didn’t do anything to him, because he felt it slightly ebbing the pain away. 

…

Wanda’s powers did a number on them. Up to now, he still dreams of that vision. 

_ We could go home. _

He stares right through the ceiling, sleep never coming for him. And like any other night, he gets up to leave for the training grounds. As expected he was the only person in there, given that all his teammates were now asleep, tired from training the whole day. 

Tony was a genius, so it wasn’t a surprise he invented punching bags for him that didn’t break. It lessened the work of replacing them each time he broke one. This one punching bag never broke, never ripped, and never fell off. He continues his hits, his bleeding knuckles not stopping him. 

_ As the world’s leading authority on waiting too long.  _

Besides that vision he received from Wanda, he dreams about  _ her and Bruce  _ too. The smile on her face flashes before him as punches another bag. Then Peggy’s eyes after another hit. 

_ “We have time, Stevie.”  _

And then, of course his mother. Sarah and her calm voice telling her that they have time together, and that he shouldn’t be sad. He should’ve known better, and that he should’ve spent more time with her then, instead of brooding in the corner. Another hard punch, Bucky’s screams echo in his ear. This time it’s louder, and he sees the way he imagined how he’d land on that snowy mountain.

He sees the blood from his knuckles staining the unbreakable bag. He doesn’t pay attention to it, only hitting harder as he sees through flashes the looks Natasha and Bruce gave to one another at Clint’s house. One hard hit after the other, he sees Nat’s teary eyes as she pleads for Bruce to turn the quinjet back. 

_ World’s leading authority on waiting too long.  _ And look at where that got him, he was too late, and too scared to tell Natasha how he felt. Another missed chance ‘cause he waited too long. 

With each punch he throws at the bag, the throbbing pain in his knuckles continue to be more painful, and thus he felt a little bit better. He stopped punching it, resting his fists on the bloodied bag when he heard footsteps coming his way, and he knew exactly who it was even when he had his back on her.

As she approached closer, he felt her hands on his wrists, lowering his fists to his side. When she finally faces him, she has this sad smile on her face and he sees that she came prepared, an alcohol and a bag of cotton with her. 

“I told you to use gloves, and to wrap it up.” She says, as she pours alcohol on the wound, and he was completely numb to the pain of it. “Steve.” She says his name, when he doesn’t respond.

“Yeah, I got it.” He replies, pulling his hands away from him. “Go back to sleep, Romanoff.” 

“Steve, you know you can tell me anything, right?” 

_ Didn’t feel like that, the last few weeks.  _ He thought to himself as he recalls how she avoided him, like a disease. He recalls her getting up from breakfast the moment he enters the kitchen, home from his morning runs with Sam. He remembers how she so desperately avoided him during the mission in retrieving the scepter. 

“Yeah.” He answered short, and then turned his back on her. 

Natasha furrows her eyebrows, and as realization settles in her, she goes blank. “I’m sorry.” She mumbles out, barely a whisper. She knows that even if it was barely a whisper, with Steve’s enhanced hearing, he heard it clear as day. 

“Can’t do anything about those times that passed.” He answers weakly, turning back to her. “Learned that the hard way.” He adds, a tight smile on his face. 

“Steve-”

“No, it’s okay.” He says, his tone tons and tons different from the usual calm Captain. “Guess, I was too late again.”

Natasha, looks at him. She was smart, he knew that and of course he would get what he was implying. Her mouth was left hanging, words not coming out. For someone like Natasha who always know what to say, he knew he took her by surprise. 

When she finally composes herself, Steve notes how she squared her shoulders, and how quickly she masked the surprise and hurt in her eyes. “I don’t deserve you.” Four words, and he knew they were back to square one. He takes another look in her eyes, and sees that same guarded look she had in Sam’s bedroom after HYDRA nearly killed both of them. 

“No.” He stresses. “You deserve better.”

Natasha huffs an annoyed breath, “You think this is easy?”

“Well, isn’t it?” Steve snaps back, and if it were another person they wouldn’t have noticed the way Natasha flinched ever so slightly. 

In the question she asked him, Steve concludes that what he thought was right. She turned to Banner to get rid of what she was feeling for him, because she thinks he didn’t deserve someone like her - a person whose ledger is dripping red. He rejoiced in the fact that she felt the same way, but it confused him as to why would she think he didn’t deserve someone like her. Why did she complicate this, when it all could’ve been sorted out all in the beginning if she didn’t start avoiding him. 

“You’d never understand.” Natasha snaps at him, her voice an octave firm and final. 

“Then help me, understand Natasha!” 

She looks at him, her eyes hopeful but still guarded. He sighs, this time taking her hands in his. He caresses her knuckles, squeezing it lightly. “I’m not leaving, Nat. No matter what life throws at me -  _ at us _ , I’m staying. You can’t ever get rid of me, I’m gonna be here by your side for as long as you can imagine. And if you want to, you can stay by my side too, and always remind me to glove or wrap my hands.” 

…

As he escorts Bucky back to the quinjet, he notices a figure that even with eyes closed, he’d know who it was. 

“Nat.” He lets out, soft as the snow surrounding them. The spy makes a beeline for him and his best friend, worry etched all over her features. When her eyes land on Bucky’s broken arm, she lets out a gasp. “I-I don’t- Tony, h-he.”

Even if he didn’t utter a complete sentence with a coherent thought, Nat nodded her head, holding his cheek. “It’s okay, Steve. It’s okay.” 

She assisted him in putting Bucky back in the quinjet, and while he treats Bucky’s wounds, he notices her looking at an approaching figure.  _ T’Challa.  _ “I mean no harm.” The King of Wakanda states, both his arms up in surrender. “I’ve learned the truth, and as my way of apologizing for how I acted, please let me help.” He states. 

As they take off, he finds Natasha in a corner in the quinjet, talking to someone on a burner phone. “Okay, Pepper. I’ll find a way to talk to you soon.” She states, and then afterwards throwing the phone on the ground, crushing it with her boot. 

“She arranged for some authorities to pick Tony up.” She says to him in this silent voice. They take a glance at T’Challa manning the quinjet, and at Bucky staring blankly ahead. She pulls his hands into hers, softly touching the wounds he sustained. 

Carefully, she pulls off his gloves as she leads him to sit on one of the quinjets many seats. She gets the first aid kit from where they’ve always put it. Getting an alcohol, and a bag of cotton, and a roll of bandage and few gauzes she settles in front of him again.

She starts with his face, carefully taking off his helmet and letting it drop to the ground. She cleans his wounds, the busted lip and the ugly cut near his left eye. She wipes the dirt away from his face, and he remains quiet, carefully watching her every move. When she holds his hands again, as she starts wiping the dried blood around it then carefully wrapping it in the bandage, he asks, “How did you find us?” 

“By this time, you should know that I would always find you Steve.” 

“Did they-”

“Yes.” She cuts, before he could even complete his question. “Apparently, he told Ross. And then Tony found out.” Natasha states, and Steve knew exactly who told Ross, and T’Challa gave them an apologetic smile, turning to them to do so. 

He remains quiet again, as she finishes up tending to his wounds. “It was all my nightmares coming true, and all I remember was beating Tony up like he was one of those punching bags.” He mutters, and he sees the way she slowly paused. “I didn’t know it’d end up like this.” 

“No one knew, Steve.” She sighed. “We didn’t want it to end like this.” She squeezes his hand. “We’ll figure this out.”

…

Being on the run, was something he never thought he’d survive. Sure, he did survive a week of running from HYDRA but, this was different.

HYDRA was the enemy, but 117 countries after them weren’t. They lived day by day, looking over their shoulder, and if one teeny tiny slip happened, they needed to move and get as far away as possible. And if you think that, that would stop them from doing missions here and there, you’re wrong. 

They worked with Fury in the shadows, stopping drug cartels and mercenaries here and there. 

Steve still had his nightmares, aside from the ones he previously always dreamed about, he now dreams of how he caused their family to break. There were no punching bags to trash, and going to the gym was too much of a risk. So instead, he lies awake every night, trying to rid himself of the nightmares that continue to plague his mind. 

And somehow, it gets easier because he’s with Natasha. 

They help each other in their own ways, from harming themselves as their coping mechanism. Instead of punching numerous bags ungloved or dancing until the pink pointe shoes turned red, they’d talk to each other. Sometimes, it was about their faith, other times what do they think of the universe, and if it is true that the multiverse exists.

“Imagine it, another universe where both you and I are still part of but different.” Natasha exclaims, while they sit in the barcaloungers of the hotel they were checked in, on. 

“A universe where the accords don’t exist sounds nice.” He mumbles softly, and he hears Natasha chuckling silently. 

“A universe, where you don’t crash the plane and get that dance sounds nicer.” Natasha speaks, as she recovers from chuckling. He looks at her, with that solemn look in his eyes. 

“But then, I wouldn’t get to meet you in that universe.” 

“Did you forget what I told you? I will always find you, Steve.”

…

As soon as they get settled back in the compound, he takes no time to change and goes directly to the gym. His eyes immediately land on the punching bag, and as he strips off of the top of his suit, and his gloves, he throws hit after hit after hit on the bag. 

_ He was living in a nightmare. _

He could still feel the cut on his forehead throbbing, and he knows for sure that the wound hasn’t closed up because he can feel the blood trickling down his face. He never pauses, he keeps on hitting them even as feels his knuckles bleeding, and even as he sees the bag staining red. 

The image of Bucky fading into dust flashes through his eyes again as he punches the bag harder. 

_ Steve? _

And then he hears Rhodey’s voice calling out to Sam, and how Sam never answered and then he just found a pile of dirt of where he was sure he landed after Thanos hit him. He punches the bag harder and harder, as both Bucky’s voice and Sam’s grunts echo in his head. 

He feels his face wet with the tears he didn’t know were falling from his eyes, and just before he could throw in another punch, he feels a hand on his wrists, strong and firm and soft, pulling it away from the bag. When he turns to her, he sees how she doesn’t have any alcohol nor a bag of cotton ready to clean his wounds, but he sees her mirroring his tear stained face, and eyes not yet done from crying. 

“Tasha.” 

“Tell me this is a dream.” She pleads, her face still covered in dirt even though her tears were still falling. “Tell me this is just another nightmare, and that when we wake up, we’d still have Sam already cooking breakfast.” She begs, as she wipes away the trail of blood on his face. 

“Oh my god, Nat.” He gasps, his breaths labored. He pulls her in his arms, and she could feel the blood on his knuckles staining her suit. “We-we’ll figure this out.”

They stay on the ground of the gym, not moving away from each other’s arms for as long as they could remember. “We’ll fix this. I swear on my life, we will fix this Natasha.” 

…

_ One year.  _

It’s been a year since half the universe faded away. One would think that a year would lessen the pain, but it doesn’t. And like most nights, he tries to restrain himself from hurting himself, instead walking towards where he would usually find her, drowning in vodka. 

The 21 gun salute, not far off was loud. Sound travels a lot faster these days. He finds her not drunk on vodka, but he does find her, tying her pointe shoes, and he knows what she’s gonna do, and before she could even do it, he smiles at her. 

“Wanna talk about the multiverse, instead?” 

Natasha gives him that smile, and he swears he sees the tears pooling around her eyes as she nods. He tries everyday to return everything back to normal, even though he knows he can’t. 

He tries not to think about, how if they only arrived earlier to the garden, if they found Thanos earlier, they may have been able to undo everything. But, again they were too late.  _ He  _ was  _ too late.  _

…

3:56 AM. 

Tomorrow will be the biggest fight they’re ever gonna face. When he goes to the gym, to let some steam off, he finds her in the middle of the ring waiting for something. When she hears his footsteps, it’s as if she knew he’d come down there. 

“Spar with me?” She smiles, her eyes brighter than he remembers they had been for the last five years. 

As he gets up the ring, and as Natasha approaches him, ready with a wrap he smiles. As she wraps his hands, he squeezes them, and she gives him another smile. 

“What do you think of getting that life together after we fix all of this?” He asks her as she finishes wrapping his hands. 

“That sounds like a plan, soldier.”

…

The moment Clint drops to the floor, he looks around again and prays to whoever is listening that this was all a joke. He hears Bruce punch the ground of the quantum tunnel, and he still looks around, looking for a flash of red but he couldn’t find any. 

And when it settles all of it to him, he runs out not uttering another word. He runs out to the lake nearby, and he didn’t know how fast he got there, but he was there now, and he lets out a loud deafening scream throwing his shield and it gets stuck on a tree. He takes it out of the tree, and when he sees the concrete wall of the pavilion, he doesn’t think twice of punching it. 

He pounces on it, punching it one hard hit after the other. He keeps on hitting it,  _ ungloved _ and he waits for her to come and pry his fists away from the wall and tell him how he should’ve wrapped or gloved his hands. 

But, no matter how hard or how many punches he throws at the wall, she didn’t show up.  _ She still wasn’t there. _

As he drops to the floor, tears staining his face, knuckles bleeding he only has one thought. 

_ Too late, to get that life together. Too late again.  _

She ran out of time, before he could even give her some of his. 

  
  
  



End file.
